Her delightful accent adds to a great story of recovery. She was originally from Mexico - Ensenada, Baja California where everybody drinks and gets high. Her father still drinks at 77 - and that is OK now. The oldest of six girls she was named after her grandfather - the crazy drunk. They built a box in the back yard with a little door that they fed him through and kept him there til he died.

The other grandparents were wonderful, active and intelligent or so she thought. Mostly he was high on marijuana and making things up about traveling the world. Her dad was violent and left her mom and five kids for another woman. Her mom went to work in the US and left Magdelena to raise her four sisters. But her Dad harassed she and her sisters such that she decided to enter the US illegally. She felt that she was less than nothing - reject of the world.

She worked, went to school and met and fell for an exciting, dangerous alcoholic. She was delusional. Chaos ensued.